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‘Poetry for our Future!’ at Spectrum Productions

15 Saturday Jun 2019

Posted by Vallum in Newsworthy

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poetry for our future

Until the end of June, our online donations manager, CanadaHelps, is running a contest called The Great Canadian Giving Challenge!

This means that if you make a donation towards Poetry for our Future! before the end of the month, our charity will be entered to win a grand prize of $10,000 for each dollar you donate! Every dollar you donate directly through CanadaHelps will count as an entry for Vallum into the draw. No amount is too small, and is gratefully appreciated! Every donation will go directly towards funding poetry and literacy outreach in our community, helping us grow the number of workshops we offer, expand outside of Montreal, and build our website as a hub and publishing resource for our workshop participants!

During the Great Canadian Giving Challenge, we’re letting you know about some of the great organizations we host literacy workshops with through our ‘Poetry for Our Future!’ outreach program. #GivingChallengeCA

Meet Spectrum Productions!

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“Spectrum Productions works with individuals, both children and adults, who are on the autism spectrum. Learning experiences focus on creativity through film and media production, offering participants the chance to express themselves individually through storytelling, while also promoting a collaborative mindset, and technological skillset.

Activities are organized as summer camp and weekend retreats, as well as after-school workshops for children and social clubs for adults.”

VSEAL hosts workshops with Spectrum to enhance poetry literacy, creativity and free play with an engagement in activism and self-expression. Our workshops have included the creation and performance of both sound and visual collage poems. In the above photos, facilitator Jessica Bebenek imagines and creates book covers with workshop participants.

You still have two more weeks to help VSEAL win $10,000 to support ‘Poetry for Our Future!’ workshops! Click here to donate – each dollar you donate before the end of June is an entry into the contest. Every dollar counts!

‘Poetry for our Future!’ at Native Montreal

06 Thursday Jun 2019

Posted by Vallum Staff in Newsworthy

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great canadian giving challenge, moe clark, native montreal, poetry for our future

Until the end of June, our online donations manager, Canada Helps, is running a contest called The Great Canadian Giving Challenge!

This means that if you make a donation towards Poetry for our Future! before the end of the month, our charity will be entered to win a grand prize of $10,000 for each dollar you donate! Every dollar you donate directly through Canada Helps will count as an entry for Vallum into the draw. No amount is too small, and is gratefully appreciated! Every donation will go directly towards funding poetry and literacy outreach in our community, helping us grow the number of workshops we offer, expand outside of Montreal, and build our website as a hub and publishing resource for our workshop participants!

During the Great Canadian Giving Challenge, we’re letting you know about some of the great organizations we host literacy workshops with through our ‘Poetry for our Future!’ outreach program. #GivingChallengeCA

Meet Native Montreal!

“Native Montreal is a service center founded by Indigenous people for Indigenous people and is associated to the Regroupement des centre d’amitié autochtone du Québec and to the National Association of friendship centers. The center, which targets the urban Aboriginal population in the greater Montreal area, offers over a dozen programs and services. Native Montréal achieves its Mission by: promoting and supporting cultural development and recognition of Indigenous culture; providing high quality support and services in health and healthy lifestyle; education and personal development; social economy and economic development. Native Montreal’s vision is for holistically healthy and culturally vibrant Indigenous families, individuals and community fully participating in the urban fabric of Montreal and successfully fulfilling their life goals, all in an active spirit of reconciliation

In April, we began a new partnership with Native Montreal, with Moe Clark facilitating workshops on behalf of performing arts organization, nistamîkwan. These workshops explored themes of home, life in the city as urban indigenous people, language, safety, and included a sharing circle to bring community together. You can hear audio excerpts of some of the work they created on our Soundcloud.

Some feedback from workshop participants:

“(I learned that) everyone can write and speak their voice.”

“(I learned) That people want to reach out like me, and there are safe places with respectful people.”

You still have three more weeks to help VSEAL win $10,000 to support ‘Poetry for our Future!’ workshops! Click the link below to donate – each dollar you donate before the end of June is an entry into the contest. Every dollar counts!

Help Vallum win $10,000 for ‘Poetry for our Future!’

Vallum 2018 Year in Review: Part Two

01 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by Vallum Staff in Newsworthy, Uncategorized

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2019

2018 has been packed with excitement at Vallum!

We launched Vallum: Contemporary Poetry issues 15:1 “Memory and Loss” and 15:2 “The Chase.” We also published Zach Pearl’s chapbook Ladybird Bug Boy, a meditation on the process of identitymaking , and Thurston Moore & John Kinsella’s chapbook The Weave, which sketches the scenes of a world in decay, leaving us to ask: is it too late to save ourselves? Read more about the chapbooks here.

Evan J won our 2018 Award for Poetry with “BLOOR-YONGE.” The second place winner was brad bradley for his poem “Lake Activity,” and an honourable mention was awarded to Robert Colman’s “Middle Distance.”

Other highlights include a chapbook workshop in partnership with the Quebec Writers’ Federation, and the Toronto launch of Ladybird Bug Boy and The Weave at Loop Gallery. We organized or attended 25 literary events, fairs, and conferences in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa, and hosted outreach workshops with new facilitators and partners.

To end off the year, we asked past contributors to share what they read in 2018 as well as what is on their lists going forward.

Here’s what some of the writers in Issue 15:2 said (and check out Part One of our Year in Review from 15:1 poets):


Hugh Anderson

Hugh Anderson

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
ndncountry, an anthology of indigenous writing, published jointly by CV2 and Prairie Fire. Featuring the work of 55 indigenous writers from across this country, the book continually surprises with the power of the voices contained therein. Bonus feature: 16 colour plates of the work from the INSURGENCE/RESURGENCE exhibition at Winnipeg Art Gallery.  It’s on my Christmas giving list this year.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Winona Linn: “Knock-Off Native.”  The piece itself may not be new, but it’s on fire.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
Shane Nielsen – I’ll start with Margin of Interest  and work back – for both the mental health and the medical perspective. Karl Shapiro – recently rediscovered – what a master of words. Jordan Peterson ( so I can offer informed argument when my conservative brother brings him up.) Map of Days – because I can’t get enough of Ransom Riggs’ world of Peculiars. Anything else that comes up and tugs at my sleeve saying, “Read me.”

Hugh Anderson is a Vancouver Islander. He has lived long enough to have been, among other things, a bus driver, an actor, and a teacher. His poems have appeared most recently in 3 Elements Review, Praxis Magazine Online, and Grain. He has one recent Pushcart Prize nomination. Read his poem “Quite Simple” in Issue 15:2.


Claudia Coutu Radmore

Claudia Radmore

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
Yellow Crane, Susan Gillis, Brick Books.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Cardinal in the Eastern White Cedar, Roo Borson, McClelland & Stewart, 2017.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
Following the River: Traces of Red River Women, Lorri Neilsen Glenn.

Claudia Coutu Radmore’s a moment or two / without remembering and Your Hands Discover Me / Tes mains me découvrent, were followed by Accidentals, which won Canada’s bpNichol Chapbook Award in 2011. fish spine picked clean, a tanka collection, was published by Éditions des petits nuages in March 2018. Read Claudia’s poem “One Saucy Little Clue” in Issue 15:2.


Kate Marshall Flaherty

Kate Marshall Flaherty

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
 I would say my favourite poetry book was Lesley Belleau’s Indianland, which explores the language of the Anishinaabe nation in the speaker’s memories, longings, and loss. I heard Lesley speak at the LCP awards this June, and I was touched by her stories as a mother of five, her insights as an Ojibwe woman, and by her words and images as a poet.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
 My best poetry discovery this year was the amazing poetry that came out of the prompted writing at my StillPoint Writing workshops. This is not a plug for the workshops, but rather a shout out to the amazing poets who came with open minds, who risked writing from within in the intense prompted ten minute sessions, and who dared to break boundaries in their own writing and who affirmed the others in the group.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
This year I hope to read my friend and fellow poet Catherine Graham’s novel Quarry, and friend and fellow poet Katerina Fretwell’s new book, which will be launched this spring with Inanna, as well as poetry from Tara Borin, Sarah Kabamba and Georgia Wilder in Quattro Book’s inaugural Best New Poets in Canada Series (which I edited with pride) … I hope many others read that too! (OK, there’s the shameless plug).

Kate Marshall Flaherty will launch her sixth poetry book, Radiant, with Inanna Press, May 2019. She’s been published in numerous journals, such as The Malahat Review, Vallum, Grain, Arc, CV2, Descant, Windsor and Saranac Reviews. She guides StillPoint Writing Workshops and performs poetry to music. See her award-winning performance poetry to music at http://katemarshallflaherty.ca/kmf/. Read her poem “Faith” in Issue 15:2.


Elana Wolff

Elana Wolff

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
The poems in Kath MacLean’s recently released Translating Air (McGill-Queen’s University Press), which imagine conversations between modernist poet H.D. and Sigmund Freud, are as beautiful and luminous as they are brainy. Translating Air is my new favourite. But I have to give a nod, too, to Guernica Editions First Poet, Ned Baeck, whose poems in Wait authenticate what it means to ask for mercy. Ned is a new poet with an old and valiant soul.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Frank Bidart is not exactly a discovery. His collections Star Dust and Metaphysical Dog are prominent on my shelf. But this year Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 came out in soft copy. I bought the collection and have been reading and rereading with renewed awe. Bidart, for me, achieves the ferocious heroic in language honed straight to the bone.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
There are several books on my winter-vacation-into-new-year list: La Folie Baudelaire by Roberto Calasso (Calasso is a perennial favourite), Hiking With Nietzsche by John Kaag, and Elizabeth Greene’s new novel, A Season Among Psychics (just out with Inanna Publications). British poet Sean Street’s Sound at the Edge of Perception is a book on the emotional effects of ‘worldly murmurings’ recommended to me by my friend, Elizabeth Bishop scholar, Sandra Barry; I’ve never been disappointed by a recommendation from Sandra, so I’m looking forward to this one. I’m also intrigued by B.W. Powe’s new electronic project, Opening Time on the Energy Threshold. I’ve enjoyed Powe’s poetry collections, The Unsaid Passing and Decoding Dust; also his poetic musings in Where Seas and Fables Meet, so I’m interested in what he’s up to now. Powe is the kind of visionary thinker who’s as versed with the wired world as he is with the mystics.

Elana Wolff is a Toronto-based writer, editor, and designer and facilitator of social art courses. Her poems and creative non-fiction pieces have appeared in Canadian and international publications and have garnered awards. Elana’s fifth collection of poems, Everything Reminds You of Something Else, was released with Guernica Editions in 2017. Read her poem “Mamillia Pool” in Issue 15:2.


Sharon Black

Sharon Black

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
The Wound Register (pub. Bloodaxe) by English poet Esther Morgan – it’s a lyrical, radiant collection of poems centred on the poet’s own family history and covering themes of loss, memory and parenthood. Esther has such lightness of touch, I’ve been a fan for years. This latest book is really an exquisite read.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Well, as editor of Pindrop Press – a small poetry publisher based between Scotland and France – I am always discovering new voices and one of my favourites this year was a wonderful debut collection I’m about to be putting out shortly called Derrida’s Monkey by Nell Farrell. It’s sharp, witty and slightly surreal, but full of compassion as well. It’s a real privilege to be publishing this book.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
Definitely The Forward Book of Poetry 2019 which is always a brilliant and diverse read of the best new work of the year. I’m also looking forward to reading Niall Campbell’s new collection Noctuary (Bloodaxe) as his last book Moontide (Bloodaxe) was simply gorgeous – understated and deeply evocative of the Scottish islands where the poet was born and still lives.

Sharon Black is from Glasgow in Scotland, but now lives in the Cévennes mountains of France. In 2017 she won the Poets and Players Poetry Competition. She is widely published and has released two collections: To Know Bedrock (Pindrop, 2011) and The Art of Egg (Two Ravens, 2015). www.sharonblack.co.uk. Read her poem “Pilgrimage” in Issue 15:2.


Mary Gilliland

Mary Gilliland

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
Kierkegaard’s Cupboard by Marianne Burton. I came to know Marianne’s work several years ago when we both had poems in an issue of Stand. She is deft with form, writes poems that matter. The poems in this new book are spoken as and for Kierkegaard; the author melds his reflections on life experiences, chronologically, and her own perspective. Most of my own persona poems give voice to anonymous characters, but one of mine is historical, spoken by Nikola Tesla. It’s both odd and fitting to be the channel for another human being, and I admire Burton’s sustaining it as a book-length enterprise.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Northwest Review. Let’s hear it for reputable publications we never quite get to that another poet passes along to us! Lakeside, in the summer, I spilled a bag of magazines to read in the sunshine – and was riveted by the heart and quality of this one’s contents, read it cover to cover.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women – her (sole?) novel, published in 1979 – my college roommate gave it to me this summer – and Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth.

Mary Gilliland hails from the northeastern United States. Other recent poems appear in Healing Muse and Hotel Amerika, online in Matter and TAB, and anthologized in From The Finger Lakes, Like Light, and Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms In Our Hands. She has taught at Cornell in Ithaca and in Doha. Read her poem “Floats to the Sky” in Issue 15:2.


rob mclennan

rob mclennan

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
That’s a tough one. There was IF wants to be the same as IS: Essential Poems of David Bromige, eds. Jack Krick, Bob Perelman and Ron Silliman, with an introduction by George Bowering (Vancouver BC: New Star Books, 2018). There was Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s Port of Being (Picton ON: Invisible Publishing, 2018). There was Julie Carr’s Real Life: An Installation (Oakland CA: Omnidawn Publishing, 2018). Must I pick but one?

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Had to be Anna Gurton-Wachter, Brooklyn poet. I produced a chapbook of hers back in January, 2018, and spent the following three or four months rereading it. Her work is a wonder to behold. Otherwise, I discovered the work of Aja Couchois Duncan, author of the book Restless Continent (Litmus Press, 2016). Wow, again.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
There are tons of things, honestly. I know Jason Christie has a poetry title with Coach House in the spring. I’m waiting for Hailey Higdon’s Spuyten Duyvil full-length debut to arrive in the mail. There are probably a dozen other forthcoming titles I can’t recall at the moment.

The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, rob mclennan’s most recent titles are the poetry collections How the alphabet was made, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) and  Household items (Salmon Poetry, 2018). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com. Read the interview “12 or 20 questions for rob mclennan” in Issue 15:2.


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You can read all the poets featured in this edition of our Year in Review in Vallum Issue 15:2.

And be sure to check out our Poem of the Week blog for 52 of our favourite poems this year.

Vallum 2018 Year in Review: Part One

27 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by Vallum Staff in Newsworthy, Uncategorized

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2019.jpg

2018 has been packed with excitement at Vallum!

We launched Vallum: Contemporary Poetry issues 15:1 “Memory and Loss” and 15:2 “The Chase.” We also published Zach Pearl’s chapbook Ladybird Bug Boy, a meditation on the process of identity-making , and Thurston Moore & John Kinsella’s chapbook The Weave, which sketches the scenes of a world in decay, leaving us to ask: is it too late to save ourselves? Read more about the chapbooks here.

Evan J won our 2018 Award for Poetry with “BLOOR-YONGE.” The second place winner was brad bradley for his poem “Lake Activity,” and an honourable mention was awarded to Robert Colman’s “Middle Distance.”

Other highlights include a chapbook workshop in partnership with the Quebec Writers’ Federation, and the Toronto launch of Ladybird Bug Boy and The Weave at Loop Gallery. We organized or attended 25 literary events, fairs, and conferences in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa, and hosted outreach workshops with new facilitators and partners.

To end off the year, we asked past contributors to share what they read in 2018 as well as what is on their lists going forward.

Here’s what some of the writers in Issue 15:1 said (and stay tuned to hear from 15:2 poets):


Evan J. Hoskins

Evan Hoskins

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
Delet This by MLA Chernoff

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Discovery of the year? How bout of the day. I found this untitled poem in our northern hospital this morning:

Today, tomorrow, yesterday
Taking our Suboxone

Getting on with life
This time we’ll do it right

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
House of Names by Colm Tóibín; Minnow Trap by Brian Horeck; Spinoza by Gilles Deleuze; Holy Wild by Gwen Beneway; The Gas Heart by Tristan Tzara.

Evan J is from Treaty 1 territory and currently lives beside Kabechenong / Teiaiagon / the Humber River. If you’ve read Evan’s work, he implores you to read at least two other non-white writers. Evan is an assistant at Brick Magazine and runs Slackline Creative Arts Series in Toronto.


Pamela Porter

Pamela-Porter-web

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
God of Shadows by Lorna Crozier. Those poems leave me speechless. I can only read one or two at a time. I actually feel “as if the top of my head were taken off.” This truly is poetry.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Canisia Lubrin. I’m still trying to get a copy of her book.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
Inri by Raul Zurita. Also, Portraits Without Frames by Lev Ozerov. What some poets have endured just to write poems. They remind us how holy and necessary is this art which we practice.

Pamela Porter’s work has won more than a dozen awards, including the Governor General’s Award and the Vallum Award for Poetry.  Her ninth volume of verse, Defending Darkness, was released in 2016 by Ronsdale Press.  Pamela lives near Sidney, BC with her family and a menagerie of rescued horses, dogs, and cats. Read her poem “Aubade” in Issue 15:1.


Yuan Changming

Changming Yuan

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
I do not have any favourite poetry book published this year.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Though in the English-speaking world I may prove to be the most widely published contemporary poetry author from China thus far, almost no editor in my country of origin has showed any interest in my poems either written in or self-translated into Chinese since my teenage years. However, in early November this year, Dr Liu Weijian, a nationally leading scholar (of Chinese classics) and highly renowned poet and novelist from Beijing University found my poetry (in Chinese) ‘deep, outstanding, brief and serene’. From his comments, I discovered, much to my comfort, that my poetry is ‘acceptable’ to an experienced mainland Chinese reader after all.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
Definitely, poetry by Robyn Sarah, Lorna Crozier and Billy Collins, among many others.

Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan and hosts Happy Yangsheng in Vancouver. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, seven chapbooks, and publication in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry: Tenth Anniversary Edition, BestNewPoemsOnline, Threepenny Review, Vallum, and 1,389 others across 41 countries.  


Laurie D. Graham

Laurie D Graham

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
One book that comes to mind is Tim Lilburn’s The House of Charlemagne, published by Oskana Poetry & Poetics. This book acted as a source text for an improvised multi-disciplinary performance centred on Henry Jackson / Honoré Jaxson, Louis Riel’s secretary during the Northwest Resistance, through whom we see Riel’s vision of Métis nationhood on the prairies.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Joshua Whitehead’s Full Metal Indigiqueer blew my hair back as I read it and gazed upon it. It felt like the poetic equivalent of rock and roll.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
Christine Stewart’s Treaty 6 Deixis sits at the top of my reading pile. As a fellow settler from Treaty 6 territory, I’m excited to learn from that book.

Laurie D. Graham hails from Treaty 6 territory and now lives on the Haldimand Tract. She is a poet, editor, the publisher of Brick Magazine, and a member of the advisory board for Oskana Poetry & Poetics. Her first book, Rove, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and her second book, Settler Education, was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Read her poem “Roost” in Issue 15:1.


Julie Mannell

Julie MannellWhat was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
I Left Nothing Inside on Purpose by Stevie Howell and Obits by Tess Liem.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Juliane Okot Bitek.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
I do what I want when I feel like it.

Julie Mannell is an author of poetry, prose, and essays. She is currently completing her MFA in Creative Writing at University of Guelph. Mannell is the recipient of the Constance Rooke/HarperCollins Scholarship, the Mona Adilman Poetry Prize, and the Lionel Shapiro Award for Excellency in Creative Writing. She splits her time between Montreal and Toronto. Read her review “Today Is a Good Day to Dream: A Review of Canisia Lubrin’s Voodoo Hypothesis“ in Issue 15:1.


Mark Grenon

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What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
My favourite book this year was Jeff Latosik’s Dreampad. I’d been following Latosik’s blog “Only an Avenue,” an online project in which he’d been offering richly considered responses to less experienced writers, so when I came across Dreampad at the bookstore I thought I’d give it a chance. It’s a complex, rich read, and I’m glad I decided to do a review of the book to deepen my understanding of its poetics.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
My best poetry discovery this year was Michael Nardone, whose The Ritualites will be available shortly through Book*hug, a poet and writer living in Montreal who had somehow escaped my attention. I’m struck by the activism and range of his avant garde poetics, from postmodernism, to Language poetry, to conceptual writing, and also by his critical writing, interviews, and transcriptive practices.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
Regarding my reading next year, frankly, I have a bad habit of buying some books and not reading them deeply enough the first time around, so I’d like to re-read Erin Mouré’s Planetary Noise. Also, because one of the most remarkable books of Canadian poetry I’ve ever read is Dionne Brand’s Ossuaries, I’m planning to pick up her latest books, The Blue Book and Theory. And though I’ve been following Billy-Ray Belcourt online, I still haven’t read This Wound is a World in its entirety, so it’s high on my list as well.

Mark Grenon‘s poetry and reviews have appeared in the Antigonish Review, filling Station, and Matrix, among others. He has lived in the Czech Republic, Taiwan, and Chile, and currently lives in Montreal. Read his review of Molly Peacock’s The Analyst in Issue 14:2.


Aisha Walker

Aisha Walker

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
Though not strictly a work of poetry, What Do Stones Smell Like in the Forest? by Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau contains some of the best prose poetry I have read in a while. This publication accompanied the exhibition What Do Stones Smell Like in the Forest?, presented at the FOFA Gallery from April 23 to May 25, 2018.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
For Your Own Good by Leah Horlick. Best rediscovery: A Tomb for Anatole by Stéphane Mallarmé, translated with an introduction by Paul Auster.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
Susceptible by Geneviève Castrée, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her by Susan Griffin, Infinite Gradation by Anne Michaels.

Aisha Walker lives and writes in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Winnipeg Free Press for National Poetry Month 2017, Room, and Contemporary Verse 2 (CV2), among others. Read her poem “11th Letter Musings” in Issue 15:1.


Nathan Mader

Nathan-Mader

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
There are so many 2018 poetry books I can’t wait to read by 2020, including ones by people near and dear! If I have to choose just one favourite published this year that I’ve been blessed to have sent to me in Japan, I’ll say my friend Randy Lundy’s Blackbird Song (University of Regina Press). Whether lyric stanzas or prose poems, Lundy’s intimate, singular voice leads the reader into personal and metaphysical meditations infused with the Cree, Buddhist, and Eastern-Western poetic traditions in which he locates himself. Somehow Lundy manages to be both refreshingly grounded while operating on a higher plane:

American redstart, Swainson’s thrush, brown thrasher.
Still, in the mythological night, transfiguration has come.
Fire and bread and, if we are lucky, a small measure of love.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
My favourite completely-new-to-me poet of 2018 has been Tarfia Faizullah. I’m still processing her Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf, 2018). It’s got everything that makes poems powerful: multi-dimensional (political, spiritual, ethical, personal) questions and insights, unflinching engagements with individual and collective trauma, energetic soundscapes, and exacting articulations of the unknowable:

…Does she know
her friends Lauren and Cameron played

house after she died, set a place for her
at a play dinner table? As though she
might stop by for a few bites of air
from empty plates with spoons empty
of her short seven years on this planet…

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
While I’m sure there’s some great soon-to-be-published books I’m completely in the dark about, I know I’m looking forward to reading Cassidy McFadzean’s Drolleries, Ariana Reines’s A Sand Book, and Frederick Seidel’s Peaches Goes It Alone in 2019. Otherwise, besides the masters that I read all the time, I think I’m only going to read prose about wild animals next year. The human world has become too human for me.

Nathan Mader lives in Regina Saskatchewan. His poems have appeared in Grain, The Fiddlehead, Vallum, The Puritan, PRISM international, and the anthology I Found It at the Movies (Guernica, 2014). He has been a finalist for the Walrus Poetry Prize. Read his poem “William H. Mumler, Spirit Photographer (1832-1884)” in Issue 15:1.


Greg Santos

Greg_Santos

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
This is a tough one to answer. It’s like asking me what my favourite book is: I have so many depending on my mood! That being said, I have a few favourites from 2018. In no particular order, I would highly recommend The Displaced Children of Displaced Children by Faisal Mohyuddin (Eyewear Publishing) featuring moving poems on heritage and immigration, The Barbarous Century by Leah Umansky (Eyewear) which touches on feminism in the 21st century and also includes some badass Mad Men and Game of Thrones inspired poems, and Ekke by Klara du Plessis (Palimpsest), which explores language in such a playful and fascinating way.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
I was delighted to be a guest reader at the launch for Tanis Franco’s debut poetry book, Quarry (University of Calgary) at Montreal’s Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore this past summer. Franco’s writing explores queerness, the body, and often in relation to location. At the time, I was not familiar with their writing, but Quarry was my favourite new poetry discovery of 2018.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
I recently picked up a bunch of poetry books from Montreal’s Salon du Livre and from the AELAQ’s Holiday Pop-Up Book Fair. The new books that I bought but have not read yet are Obits by Tess Liem, The Night Chorus by Harold Hoefle, hotwheel by Aja Moore, My Ariel by Sina Queyras, and The Size of a Bird by Clementine Morgan. Some books that I’m looking forward to reading that are not poetry include Hum by Natalia Hero, Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq, Zolitude by Paige Cooper, Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig, and Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias.

Greg Santos is the author of Rabbit Punch! and The Emperor’s Sofa. He regularly works with at-risk communities and teaches at the Thomas More Institute. He is the poetry editor of carte blanche and lives in Montreal. His new pamphlet, Blackbirds, is forthcoming with Eyewear Publishing, London, UK in Spring 2018.


Kevin Irie

Kevin Irie

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
Holy Wild by Gwen Benaway. Benaway’s experiences across gender, race, and sex also bridge disparate poetic forms: the confessional, the political, the narrative, the lyrical, transcending them all. Convincing but not coercing, candid yet vulnerable, Benaway uses craft – note her spacing, her perfect line breaks – to carry the reader along so effortlessly that one is totally swept up and along in her trans journey—and grateful for the ride.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Correspondent by Dominique Bernier-Cormier. Bernier-Cormier uses the prose poem to go beyond reportage when writing about the sunken Russian sub, Kursk; the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud; the hostage crisis in a Moscow theatre. How he reconciles, imaginatively connects, and humanely conveys such suffering and disaster without being exploitative is the high risk he takes for the stunning and empathetic poems he creates.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
Here is my reading list, in no particular order, all 8 of them Canadian.

Any year with a new poetry book by Tim Bowling is a good one, so here’s to 2019 and The Dark Set: New Tenderman Poems, great news compounded by the fact that he is bringing back the title subject of a previous book.

Do you know about the parallel poem, the split sonnet, the double sonnet?  heft by Doyali Islam will no doubt enlighten the reader about these literary inventions of hers, gathered in her multiple award-winning poems, a prize package in print. And it’s not just about form: her subjects are personal and poignant.

Cluster by Souvankham Thammavongsa is due out this spring. Any new book by Thammavongsa seems an exciting rarity, a poet who distills experience with a quiet but illuminating sense of authority—and honour.

Magnetic Equator is by Kaie Kellough, sound synthesizer poet par excellence. Have you seen his online river poems slated for this book? Have you read his novel, Accordéon, a marvellous missive to a mythic and multitudinous Montreal? Be prepared for anything. Kellough can revitalize language with a freshness, felicity and dexterity that energizes every single letter of the English alphabet.

Parts of The Caiplie Caves by Karen Solie have appeared in various publications, incisively witty and wise poems about Scotland, hermits, caves and war. To read them together in one book is all –and more—than one can ask.

Twitch Force by Michael Redhill is his first poetry book in years. The success of his novels almost makes one forget the accomplishment of his poetry. It will be intriguing to see where poetry leads him now.

This is Where I Get Off by Jeff Kirby is also due in spring, a poet whose wit comes with a wink or wild laughter. If Frank O’Hara was more ebullient, he’d be Kirby, poetry with a personality yet always personable.

Stilt Jack by John Thompson is being re-issued for the first time since its 1978 publication. The source of so many other books, ghazal after ghazal, down through the generations. This is where it all started.

Kevin Irie has published previously in Vallum, as well as in the States, England and Australia. His book, Viewing Tom Thomson, A Minority Report (Frontenac House, 2012) was a finalist for both the Toronto Book Award and the Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Award. He lives in Toronto. Read his poem “Current” in Issue 15:1.


Phoebe Wang

Phoebe Wang

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
Laura Ritland’s East and West is a book I had been anticipating for years, given her delicate handing of craft combined with an ethical perspective on the polarizing features of our society. I have already reread it a few times, and plan on doing so again. Also high on the list is the Tracy K. Smith’s Wade in the Water, new chapbooks by Lauren Turner and Anne-Marie Turza, Dani Couture’s Listen Before Transmit and Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s Port of Being.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Thanks to fellow poet Michael Prior, I discovered Emily Jungmin Yoon’s A Cruelty Special to Our Species and its unrelenting uncovering of the stories of Korean ‘comfort women’, carved out with language as piercing as shrapnel.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
I’m most looking forward to catching up with 2018 releases such as Dionne Brand’s Theory and Gwen Benaway’s Holy Wild, and I’m thinking of building a bunker in order to block out the world for when new titles arrive from Domenica Martinello, Kayla Czaga, Doyali Islam, Souvankham Thammavongsa and Karen Solie.

Phoebe Wang’s debut collection of poetry, Admission Requirements, appeared with McClelland and Stewart in Spring 2017. Currently she is a poet-in-residence with the national organization Poetry in Voice, and works at OCADU’s Writing and Learning Centre where she and coordinates Mighty Pen, a writing circle for BIPOC students. Read her poem “The Balance of the World is Tested” in Issue 15:1.


Marcela Huerta

Marcela Huerta

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
Obits does it all for me. Melancholy but imbued with fierceness, observational while never risking emotional detachment, everything is possible when it is in Tess Liem’s voice. Obits knows that to even attempt to memorialize the missing is a revolutionary act. How could this not be my favourite poetry book of the year?

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
While at the FIPR in Argentina this September, I was blessed with the presence of New Zealand Māori poet Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui/Ngāti Porou). Her debut collection of poetry, Poūkahangatus, is as effortlessly powerful as it is brightly sexy, a smiling devil emoji of a book that tackles mythology, legacy, and colonialism with depth and humour. It also has one of the best poem titles of the year: “A Sugar Daddy is Essentially an Arts Patron.” I need as many people as possible to buy this book, on the island of New Zealand or off.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
I like to balance my reading palette with a bit of classic-I’ve-somehow-held-off-on-till-now and a bit of brand-spanking-new titles. So it’s going to be a dip into We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin with a follow-up of Monument by Labi Siffre. Then a taste of What’s in a Name by Ana Luísa Amaral (Translated by Margaret Jull Costa) with Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni to chase it down. Will I be full by then? Never.

Marcela Huerta is the author of Tropico, a collection of poetry published by Metatron Press in 2017. She has worked at the Museum of Anthropology and Working Format as a Graphic Designer, and at Drawn & Quarterly as an Assistant Editor. She is the proud daughter of Chilean refugees. Find her online @marsmella.


Jennifer Cave

Jennifer Cave

What was your favourite poetry book published this year? 
My favorite poetry book published this year is “Line”, by Robert Hilles.

What’s on your reading list for 2019?
I am planning right now to read, The Drone Pilot’s Handbook, The Knowledge, the Skills, the Rules, by Adam Juniper. Also on my list is Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews by Jonathan Cott.

Jennifer Cave lives in White Rock, British Columbia, writing and painting. She was born in Vancouver in 1966. Read her poem “Unbearable Paradise” in Issue 15:1.


Vallum 15_1 cover

You can read all the poets featured in this edition of our Year in Review in Vallum Issue 15:1.

Look out for more Year in Review responses from poets featured in Vallum coming later this month!

And be sure to check out our Poem of the Week blog for 52 of our favourite poems this year.

Vallum 2017 Year in Review: Part One

13 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by Vallum Staff in Newsworthy, Uncategorized

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2018

2017 was a busy year for Vallum!

We launched Vallum: Contemporary Poetry issues 14:1 and 14:2, and published two new chapbooks: Mind of Spring by Jami Macarty, winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award, and entre-Ban by Bhanu Kapil, a collection of notes taken by Bhanu Kapil during the writing of her 2015 book, Ban en Banlieue. Read about our new chapbooks here.

Ali Blythe won the 2017 Award for Poetry with “Waking in the Preceding,” while Brian Henderson received second place with “The Incommensurate.” Honourable mentions went to Judy Little for “Ur Signs” and Roberta Senechal for “After Eden.”

We also hosted two pop-up shops, at Le Cagibi and the Concordia Co-op Bookstore, attended press fairs in Toronto, Calgary, Ottawa, and Montreal, and hosted outreach workshops with new facilitators and organizers.

To commemorate Vallum’s busy and successful year, we asked this year’s contributors to share their thoughts on the books they read in 2017 and what’s in store for the year ahead.

Here’s what some of the writers published in Vallum Issue 14:1 said (stay tuned to hear from Vallum 14:2 poets, our chapbook authors, and 2017 contest winners):


Sonnet L’Abbé

dr-s-labbeWhat was your favourite poetry book published this year?
An Honest Woman
, by Jónína Kirton.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Délani Valin, “No Buffalos”

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Kith by Divya Victor; Call Out by David Bradford; Full Metal Indigiqueer, Joshua Whitehead; Retreats by Karen Solie.

Sonnet L’Abbé is a professor at Vancouver Island University. Her chapbook, Anima Canadensis, came out with Junction Books in 2016, and won the bpNichol Chapbook Award in 2017. L’Abbé’s upcoming collection, Sonnet’s Shakespeare,  will be published by McClelland and Stewart in 2018. Read “XVL,” from her forthcoming collection, in Issue 14:1. 


Klara Du Plessis

kdpcrop

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Titles are evading me—I know I read many exquisite poetry collections and now I can’t remember any!

One of my favourites is Erin Robinsong’s Rag Cosmology (BookThug), which I read while camping in Northern Quebec during the summer. There is an openness, integrity, playfulness, and ecological relevance to these, somewhat long-form, poems. Erin’s language has a way of dismantling itself and regrouping organically, which I admire and enjoy.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Captured somewhere proclaiming that I’m dedicating my life to poetry, I also remembered again, this year, that poetry necessitates variegating life, nurturing, instead of neglecting, an array of personal interests—attending contemporary dance performances and art exhibitions, getting a pedicure, taking time to care for yourself, taking care of others—the list could be endless, with each enumeration eventually holding the potential to spawn poetry.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
I’m excited for Tess Liem’s debut from Coach House Books, and Shannon Maguire’s new Zip’s File: A Romance of Silence from BookThug. Admittedly, I haven’t researched the forthcoming lists of books to be published in 2018 yet, but I spent some time recently curating a list of titles for myself to explore in the coming months. A few of these include: Renee Gladman’s Calamities, Cecilia Vicuña’s Spit Temple (which is an anthology of transcriptions from performance projects), Etel Adnan’s Night, Gregoire Pam Dick’s Metaphysical Licks, Koleka Putuma’s Collective Amnesia (I want to read more South African literature generally). I’d like to continue reading and supporting friends, whether in published form or not; chapbooks will definitely float onto my list, especially with new endeavours such as Rahila’s Ghost Press and Knife Fork Book’s imprint.

Klara du Plessis is a poet and critic residing in Montreal. Her chapbook Wax Lyrical (Anstruther Press, 2015) was shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, and her debut collection Ekke is forthcoming (Palimpsest Press, 2018). She curates the monthly, Montreal-based Resonance Reading Series. Read her review of Alex Manley’s We are All Just Animals and Plants and Steven Heighton’s The Waking Comes Late in Issue 14:1. 


Bill Neumire

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What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
I particularly enjoyed In the Language of My Captor by Shane McCrae

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
This isn’t a book, but I’m going to cheat a little and say that Paris Review’s new podcast series is my best poetry discovery of the year. They really put out a finely polished product that makes my commute much more enjoyable.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Laura Kasischke’s New and Selected Poems is one I’m really looking forward to this year.

Bill Neumire’s first book, Estrus, was a semi-finalist for the 42 Miles Press Award, and his recent poems appear in the Harvard Review Online, Beloit Poetry Journal, and West Branch. Read his review of Rob Taylor’s The News in Issue 14:1. 


Jeffrey Mackie

exposmackie

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Catriona Wright—Table Manners

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Shannon Webb-Campbell

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
I really want to read Sue Elmslie’s Museum of Kindness as I have enjoyed her past work. I also want to read Daljit Nagra from the UK as I have heard great things about his work.

Jeffrey Mackie is a Montreal poet. He has been featured on Mountain Lake PBS and in the anthology The Poet’s Quest for God (Eyewear), UK, 2016. He also has a new pamphlet collection available called Memory and Cities (Sitting Duck Press, 2016). In addition, he hosts the popular Literary Report on CKUT radio. Read his poem “The Days” in Issue 14:1. 


Adam Lawrence

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Jeramy Dodds’s Drakkar Noir
-I had the pleasure of hearing Dodds recite some of the weird gems in this collection (I’ll never look at Santa Claus, amusement rides, or Canada in the same way).

Xenotext

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Peter Trower, Haunted Hills & Hanging Valleys, 1969-2004
– An excellent collection that offers a vivid portrait of the logging life – in terse, grim, joyful language.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Leonard Cohen’s The Flame and Christian Bök’s The Xenotext

Adam Lawrence’s writing has appeared in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, Salon, JSTOR Daily, Vallum: Contemporary Poetry, and Feathertale.com. He’s taught writing and literature courses throughout eastern Canada, and is currently a freelance writer and editor in Montreal. Read his poem “Evolution” in Issue 14:1. 


Maureen Korp

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What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Blaine Marchand.  My Head, Filled with Pakistan (2016)

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Rereading chunks of my big, old battered copy of The Collected Poems of W.B.Yeats (1940) as I worked my way through a spiffy, new biography of Yeats—Fiona Biggs, The Pocket Yeats (2017).

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Whatever I have not yet read by Patrick Leigh Fermor.  His letters have just been published. Also, a fine collection of poems by three Palestinian poets:  I remember My Name: Poetry by Samah Sabawi Ramzy Baroud, Jehan Bseiso (2016).

Maureen Korp is a military brat, the daughter of an American soldier. She grew up in faraway places including Okinawa, Hokkaido, Oklahoma, Texas, and Germany. Home base today is Ottawa. She is a university lecturer and researcher. Her field is visionary earth-centered art. Read her poem “Oahu” in Issue 14:1. 


E. Canine McJabber—Winner, Vallum Award for Poetry 2016

catriona

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Reading Catriona Wright’s Table Manners while road-tripping was a terrible idea, but only because it gave me all the cravings that gas station food could only fail to satisfy. It’s all tender and toothy.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
I’m super in love with the wealth of writing by queer, trans*, and Two-Spirit writers in Canada. Reading books by Kai Cheng Thom, Amber Dawn, Joshua Whitehead, and many others feels like coming home to a place I didn’t know I had the keys for.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?            
So far just my dogs’s horoscopes on the Astro Poets twitter page.

E. Canine McJabber has published poems in several journals and zines across Canada. A travelling salesperson by day, they live and write between Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec. Their travel entourage consists of their two pups, Bonnie and Clyde. Read their award-winning poem “To My Mother, Aloud” in Issue 14:1. 


James Mckee—2nd Place Winner, Vallum Award for Poetry 2016

james mckee twr

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
I have two choices for this question: Patricia Smith’s Incendiary Art, aptly titled if ever a book were, and Ange Mlinko’s Distant Mandate, exquisite & memorable in all the right ways.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Like many readers, I suspect, I only became aware of Max Ritvo’s work after he left us. His was a real loss. Of our older poets, this year I read through the books of Derek Walcott, one of our true contemporary masters.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
I seem to be perpetually engaged in a losing battle to fill in the vast gaps in my reading, and next year will be no different: I plan to read for the first time (the shame!) Joseph Brodsky; to reread old favorites like Robert Pinsky, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Lowell; and to give another try to poets whom in the past I haven’t much liked, like John Ashbery and Ted Hughes (maybe this time. . . )

A New Yorker by birth (and likely by death), James McKee’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Acumen, The Raintown Review, Saranac Review, The South Carolina Review, THINK, The Worcester Review, The Rotary Dial, and elsewhere. Read his award-winning poem “To a Young Man Seen Wearing a Bow Tie” in Issue 14:1. 


Salvatore Difalco—Honorable Mention, Vallum Award for Poetry 2016

sam3

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
Favourite poetry book published this year was a tie with Peter Gizzi’s  Archeophonics and John Ashbery’s dreamy translation of Rimbaud’s Illuminations.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Alien vs Predator, a book by Michael Robbins. The book is OK, but the poem “Alien vs Predator” is enviably groovy. I dig it.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Anything but Canadian poetry, I’m afraid.

Salvatore Difalco lives in Toronto. His work has appeared in print and online. Read his award-winning poem “Joy” in Issue 14:1. 


J. Mark Smith

November_cover.jpeg

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
November (Bayeux Arts, 2017). The title refers to November, 1984 and the genocidal violence against Indian Sikhs that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi.  Jaspreet Singh’s family narrowly escaped death in those pogroms, and many of the poems in this book are about the long aftermath of that time. Witty, poignant, multilingual, erudite poems by a writer who has fully absorbed the lessons of the modernist and the postcolonial traditions.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
Ten Poems of Francis Ponge translated by Robert Bly & Ten Poems of Robert Bly inspired by Francis Ponge (Owl’s Head Press, 1990). I can’t quite shake the feeling I’m not supposed to like Robert Bly, but he is a great translator and poet. An incredibly beautiful little book that I came across for the first time this year. Also: Stories from the Road Allowance People (Gabriel Dumont Institute, 2010; revised ed.) Translated by Maria Campbell. Technically, these are oral tales, originally in Michif, rendered into a Metis dialect of English by Campbell. But they’ve been set down with such attention to verbal and sonic detail, to the rhythm of phrase and sentence, that I think of them as poems. I never knew about this book until a few months ago; it’s great.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
I’ve been looking forward for a couple of years now — as it’s been delayed several times — to the publication of Architecture of Dispersed Life: Selected Poems by Pablo de Rokha; translated by Urayoán Noel (Shearsman Books, 2018.) This will be the first book-length translation into English of work by one of Chile’s greatest twentieth century poets.

J. Mark Smith‘s verse translations (from Chilean Spanish) of poems by Winétt de Rokha have appeared recently in Shearsman and The Fortnightly Review. His essay “The Richest Boy in the World” was published in Queen’s Quarterly 122: 1 (Spring 2015). He teaches in the English Department at MacEwan University. Read his poem “Prayers for C. Elegans and H. Sapiens” in Issue 14:1. 


Crystal Hurdle

Hurdle portrait 2016 Fall.jpg

What was your favourite poetry book published this year?
I loved AUGURIES by Clea Roberts.

What was your best poetry discovery this year?
​Have been excited to read verse novels for middle-grade readers and am keen on reading more.

What’s on your reading list for 2018?
Bring on fiction titles by Erdrich, Cusk, and Wolitzer, not to mention volume one of Sylvia Plath’s collected letters.  At over 1300 words, it may well be a book I’ll still be reading in 2019!

Crystal Hurdle teaches English and Creative Writing at Capilano University in North Vancouver, BC. In October 2007, she was Guest Poet at the International Sylvia Plath Symposium at the University of Oxford, reading from After Ted & Sylvia: Poems. Her work, poetry and prose, has been published in many journals, including Canadian Literature, The Literary Review of Canada, Event, Bogg, Fireweed, and The Dalhousie Review. Teacher’s Pets, a teen novel in verse, was published in 2014. Read her poem “Bog People” in Issue 14:1, and her poem “Veterinarian Dr. Bondo” in Issue 14:2. 


Cover PDF

You can read all the poets featured in this edition of our Year in Review in Vallum Issue 14:1.

Look out for more Year in Review responses from poets featured in Vallum coming later this month!

And be sure to check out our Poem of the Week blog for 52 of our favourite poems this year.

“Frederick Douglass” by Robert Hayden

07 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by Vallum Staff in Newsworthy, Poem of the Week, Uncategorized

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robert_hayden

Frederick Douglass

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

 

Robert Hayden (1913-1980) was an American poet, essayist and educator, and the first African-American to serve as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. “Frederick Douglass” is taken from The Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, (Liveright, 1997). Copyright © Robert Hayman, 1966.

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Vallum 2016 Year in Poetry, Part 2

30 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by Vallum Staff in Featured Interview, Newsworthy

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hny2

Yesterday we brought you Part 1 of our Year in Poetry questionnaire, in which we asked our recent contributors:

1) What was your Favourite Poetry Book?

2) What was your Discovery of the Year? and

3) What advice do you have for 2017?

We received so many thoughtful responses we couldn’t fit them all in one place, so without further ado, we bring you Part 2 of Vallum: Contemporary Poetry‘s Year in Poetry.

Mary Jo Bang

Mary Jo Bang

1. My favourite poetry book published in 2016 is The Wug Test by Jennifer Kronovet. Kronovet’s book is a correction to the bizarre idea being put forward recently by some that language doesn’t mean anything, that a politician can tell lies or utter hate speech and then say he or she was “just kidding,” or that someone can maintain that there are no “facts” and therefore politically self-serving statements must not be questioned.

As a reviewer in Publishers Weekly wrote: “Rigorously intellectual and compassionate in its approachability, this second collection from Kronovet (Awayward), a 2015 National Poetry Series winner, employs linguistics research to probe how language makes ‘the world a glass we fill by speaking.’ There is a fierce and tender optimism in the notion that ‘a box can be// a word can be a ship can be/ the blank that takes us to each other.’ Tenderness is at the core of these poems, and Kronovet turns over each word carefully as only an attentive lover of language can.”

2. For me, there were two exciting discoveries of the year in poetry. One was via Vivian Pollak’s Our Emily Dickinsons (University of Pennsylvania Press). Pollak’s book examines Dickinson’s hold on the poetic imagination of Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath. The book made me realize how radically misrepresented Dickinson has been by scholars and biographers who have often made her seem high-strung and neurasthenic, always speaking haltingly from behind a just-ajar door. Pollak gives us not one but many Emilys, none measured by neurotic insufficiency, but all living a robust poetic life—and an equally robust afterlife in which she profoundly influenced other strong women poets. The value of Vivian Pollak’s book, which I am certain will be lasting, is that by tracing her influence, Pollak reveals a Dickinson that is less fragile, more capable, more knowingly engaged in poetic de-familiarization.

The second discovery was via Terese Svoboda’s Anything that Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet (Schaffner Press). I had never read poems by Lola Ridge and yet, as Svoboda makes clear, I should have. Ridge was a major figure in American Modernism who enjoyed a wide readership during her lifetime, published many books, some of which won major prizes, and was a mentor to others poets whose work is still read today. Her work influenced Hart Crane, among others. I was rather stunned by how quickly and how completely she was forgotten after she died in 1941. She clearly deserves to be read and remembered. Without her, modernist history is incomplete.

3. More than ever before, we have to be diligent in speaking out against any attempt for people, especially politicians, to manipulate language in a manner that undermines fact and truth. We have to raise our voices to protect every kind of natural diversity—skin color, sexual identity, ethnicity, country of origin. We have to protect the rights of women to control their bodies and their minds. We have to ensure free public education. It’s a tall order, but if we fail to do any of these things, we will put the fabric of our society at risk. And if we don’t protect the air and water and land, we will destroy every hope we have for a future.

Mary Jo Bang‘s most recent collection of poems is The Last Two Seconds (2015, Graywolf Press); a new collection, A Doll for Throwing, will be published by Graywolf in August 2017. See Mary Jo’s poem “The Scurrying White Mice Disappear” in Vallum 13:2.

John Wall Barger

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1. My favourite was The Deleted World, a tiny book of Tranströmer’s poems. The translations (by Robin Robertson) are good, but really I’ll take any excuse to revisit Tranströmer’s frozen visionary landscape. I love how he flashes from a personal detail to the earth to some (visionary) truth about existence: “I close my eyes. / There is a silent world, / there is a crack / where the dead / are smuggled over the border.” And he is not afraid, as so many of us are nowadays, of talking about the soul.

2. A friend recommended Alice Oswald. She’s amazing! Her new book, Falling Awake, packs a punch, but in a subtle, quiet, pensive way. I find I crave such poems, maybe because that energy is the opposite of my own. I love her delicious, delicate repetitions and music (“What is the word for wordless, when the ground / bursts into crickets?”). She has me staring at the hawks circling above our house, and writing aubades.

3. I just reread one of my favourite novels, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. It’s set in the US in 1850, “in a time before nomenclature was and each was all.” The language is so astoundingly fresh: King James archaisms, southern colloquialisms, apocalyptic metaphor, and more. As I read I kept wondering how in hell McCarthy did that. I mean, did he have a photographic memory, or had he collected thousands of quotes—I pictured his walls covered with taped Bible pages, fortune cookies, newspaper clippings, overheard phrases—to use in his books? Then it occurred to me: it’s all him, inventing, not copying. He’s inside that nomenclature. It never happened, nobody ever spoke that way, it’s his alone. It was a lightning bolt moment for me, about voice. Up to a point we collect and repeat, then we become the engine of our own unique diction.

In 2016, John Wall Barger came out with two chapbooks (“Samovar / Dukkha” (Baseline Press) and “The Vnfortunate Report & Tragicall Tidings of Leslie Barger” (Thee Hellbox Press)), and his poems are forthcoming in Hotel Amerika, Cimarron Review, Freefall, and Arc. See John’s poem “The Swans Flew Out of the Sun” in Vallum 13:1.

Lorna Crozier

1. Matthew Dickman’s Mayakovsky’s Revolver, Norton, 2012.

2. A new book that just came out with Frontenac House Poetry, Blood Orange by Heidi Garnett. Powerful, heart-breaking poems about the author’s family experience in WW2 Germany.

3. For 2017 I have no advice for anyone else, just for myself. To try to do the next right thing to stop the terrible destruction of our beautiful planet and the creatures who live here.

Lorna Crozier‘s The Wrong Cat (McClelland and Stewart, 2015) won the Pat Lowther Award and the Raymond Souster Award. See Lorna’s poem “Modesty” in Vallum 12:2.

Amanda Earl

amanda-earl_june-25-2016

1. Sandra Ridley, Silvija (Book Thug, 2016): dark, incantatory, potent & important work.

2. Adele Barclay (having first read a poem of hers in The Fiddlehead, then more online & finally in her first trade book: If I Were In A Cage I’d Reach Out for You (Nightwood Editions, 2016); another answer: Montreal as a hotbed of luscious & brilliant poets.

3. Write bad ass poems to try and help yourself & others cope with/distract yourself from the pending doom many of us feel now that we’re in a post-truth, post-compassion era. Make art & publish the art of outsiders. Let the inside eat its own tail.

Amanda Earl is working on a poetry manuscript entitled Grace: city poems under the influence of Barnes, Buckley, Cixous, Jacobs, the seasons, melancholy & gin. More info: AmandaEarl.com & on Twitter: @KikiFolle. See Amanda’s poem “Bedlam Spring” in Vallum 13:2.

Jill Jorgenson

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1. Big shout-out to Robyn Sarah and her GG award-winning book My Shoes Are Killing Me.

2. Not a book, but indubitably poetry nonetheless: Jane Siberry’s CD Ulysses’ Purse. She is absolutely a poet, and these gorgeously accompanied sung-poems slow my breath and my heartbeat, induce a space of peace and calm.

3. Advice?? Well that feels audacious. About poetry, or just period? I feel inclined to want to put out there some nebulous, but fervent notions about Love and Oneness and Being in the Now, all substantially unhelpful “advice” indeed, so I’ll just say… Remember this paradox: everything matters, and none of it matters. It’s true.

Also, one further wisp of advice: check out the 2014 Cormorant release Looking East Over My Shoulder, by Jill Jorgenson. See Jill’s poem “Spit” in Vallum 12:2.

Richard Kelly Kemick

1. Michael Prior’s Model Disciple. 

2. I read Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband for the FIRST TIME. Yes, I know––I’m a bit late to the party. But you know what, this Carson person isn’t half bad. I think she could really go places.

3. I’ve recently admitted that I like white wine better than red wine. I have a suspicion that everyone feels this way but “society” is keeping us down. My advice is to embrace white wine and admit it is, at the end of the day, the far better choice.

Richard Kelly Kemick‘s Caribou Run is out now on icehouse press. See Richard’s poem “Ode to What is Left Behind” in Vallum 10:2.

Adam Lawrence

1. Shane Neilson’s Meniscus (2009).

I admit, I liked the way the paper felt in my hands, but I also enjoyed the poems that explored sickness/healing. I’m a New Brunswick boy, too, like Neilson, and I was happy to see some allusions to Alden Nowlan–one of my favorite Atlantic Canadian poets.

2. Matt Robinson (from Halifax, NS). He’s quickly become one of my favourites. I got hooked by the title poem of the chapbook a fist made and then un-made (2013), and am happy to see he’s got a new collection out.

3. No. I’m always looking for wisdom, really, enjoying each new book as a new horizon, a new world–like Prospero says to Miranda in The Tempest: “‘Tis new to thee.”

Adam Lawrence‘s writing has appeared in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, Salon, Vallum, and JSTOR Daily. See Adam’s poem “The Wish” in Vallum 13:1.

Blaine Marchand

1. And With Thy Spirit  by April Bulmer (Hidden Book Press, 2016). I have not read April’s work for many decades. Her latest book of poetry is an exploration of spirituality. This book is the work of a mature artist who knows her métier, who is gifted in her telling and brave with honesty.

2. physical by Andrew McMillan (Cape Poetry, 2015). A birthday gift and a wonderful one. He is a British poet of whom I was not aware. His work is a powerful voice speaking about gay male love.

even this page is white by Vivek Shraya (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016). An important book even though I found it at times more polemic than poetic. The layout, which also conveys the central idea, is fantastic. What she says needs to be heard and considered.

3. A centuries old Shakespearean one – “To thine own self be true.” Keep on writing poetry in your own voice despite what others may say. Susan Glickman had an interesting post on Facebook – “accessible was now considered proof of insufficient artistry”. I have been thinking a lot about that since. In each generation, there are dominate poetic styles and each generation has the tendency to see the previous one’s as no longer relevant. Surely in the Canadian poetry scene, there is space for multiple voices and styles. All should be allowed to speak and given their due.

Blaine Marchand is currently working on two poetry manuscripts, Where You Dwell and My Head Filled With Pakistan, and a short story collection, Nomads. See Blaine’s poems “The Cracking of Foundations” and “The Stealth of Snow” in Vallum 13:1.

Cassidy McFadzean

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1. Moez Surani’s Operations, a book-length poem that lists the names of military operations, truly underlines the power held by individual words. Since reading Operations, I’ve tried to be more precise in my use of language both in poetry and in everyday life.

2. I spent much of November reading the collected Lydia Davis, often holding in tears or laughter as I rode the bus to work.

3. It is more important than ever to read diverse books!

Cassidy McFadzean has new poems coming out in PRISM International, The Humber Literary Review, and Numéro Cinq. See Cassidy’s poem “American Harpy” in Vallum 13:2.

Ilona Martonfi

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1. Jan Zwicky’s String Practice, Vallum chapbook. And Nox by Anne Carson.

2. Kelly Norah Drukker’s, Small Fires, published with McGill-Queen’s University Press

3. “Even if a line was brilliant and beautiful, if it’s not furthering the thrust and life of the poem, it needs to be cut.” –Ada Limón

Ilona Martonfi, author of The Snow Kimono, (Inanna Publications, 2015). Forthcoming, Salt Bride, (Inanna Publications, Spring 2019). See Ilona’s poem “Dandelion Snow” in Vallum 11:1.

Ruth Roach Pierson

1. Edward Hirsch, Gabriel: A Poem (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).

2. Olena Kalytiak Davis, The Poem She Didn’t Write and Other Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2014); shattered sonnets love cards and other off and back handed importunities (Copper Canyon Press, 2003/2014); And Her Soul Our of Nothing (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1997).

3. Remember that poetry is solace for the soul, a powerful antidote to the madness of the politics that gives politics a bad name.

“I had the pleasure of reading poems with Maureen Hynes and John Reibetanz at an event sponsored by Larry Robin’s Moonstone Arts Centre in Philadelphia on September 30 and with a large group of Canadian poets at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC on October 9 and launching my second chapbook, Untranslatable Thought (Anstruther Press, 2016), at the Abbozzo Gallery in Toronto on October 15.” See Ruth’s poem “A Newfoundland Chimera” in Vallum 13:1.

Michael J. Shepley

1. For 2016, my unearthing in a clean up of the Billy Collins collection called Picnic, Lightning. I bought it with intent a couple years ago. Since I subtitled one of my efforts “after the style of B. Collins,” in that I had heard a couple of his humorous poems read on Prairie Home Companion, I decided to dig in. I liked the material, smooth as good whisky. But I have to elide that subtitle. He has humor, but Jazz and nature and, I’d say, a bit of melancholy are closer to his soul.

2. I read a good many poems, from little publications, to the New Yorker‘s, and the Poem A Day series. I am afraid I have an “existential” attention span. Like almost in one ear, out the other after a short pause. Though that word figure does not translate well to reading…

But a recent Poem A Day has me intending to dig up some William Carlos Williams because of the lines “a liquid moon/moves gently among/the long branches” and “the wise trees/stand sleeping/in the cold” since I like nature and season poems. (But I might have dumped cold for snows…don’t we all play the editor game?)

3. Like Mr. Natural- keep on truckin’ (I actually know a guy, Martin, who was a neighbor of the cartoonist R. Crumb when the guy fled the Bay Area for the bucolic life around Winters, CA. In fact I have met a couple older folk who claim to have played in Crumbs Rock band once upon a time. But old 60s gen memories are based in bent chops, so… I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting the legend). The old phrase can be interpreted as keep working it. Like, for writing, do everyday, then repeat .

Since late 2014, Michael J. Shepley has had poems in print at CA Quarterly, Muse International, and Seems, and online at Danse Macabre, Penumbra, Xanadu, and Pinyon. See Michael’s poem “November’s End” in Vallum 13:2.

Jan Zwicky

1. I’ve read too many fine books this year to be able to specify a favourite. But I recently finished an anthology that I can recommend highly: Dark Mountain 10, “Uncivilized Poetics”.

2. The anthology contains an essay by American poet Rob Lewis called “No Nature Poems, Please”; it did indeed make me sit up and take notice.

3. Deepen your love for the earth. As Mr. Lewis says, “Nature, slowly collapsing into silence, calls out louder than ever for the poet. Now we all need what the poet brings: the broken-open hearts of words, the wild articulation, the howl.”

Jan Zwicky’s most recent collection is The Long Walk. See an excerpt from Jan’s chapbook, String Theory, in Vallum 13:2.

John Sibley Williams

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1. 2016 really was an incredible year for poetry, and I’d be hard pressed to label one book (or even ten) as my favourite. But a few of my favourites have been Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Sjohnna McCray’s Rapture, Jamaal May’s The Big Book of Exit Strategies, and Francine J. Harris’ Play Dead.

2. Definitely Keith Leonard’s debut collection Ramshackle Ode. Somehow this powerful book hasn’t made it to any “Best of 2016” lists I’ve seen. Though it just came out earlier this year, I’ve already read it twice.

3. Instead of advice or wisdom, how about a plea? The creative, free thinking, and open-hearted aspects of American culture are under political attack by certain figures whose rowdy bases are prepared to intimidate, censor, and harm those of us who cherish diversity, those of us who choose love over discord. So I challenge every poetry lover to spend 2017 reading collections by writers outside the traditional white-male-straight hierarchy. Read Middle Eastern poets, African poets, South American poets. Read poets representing the many indigenous tribes in the US and Canada. Read émigré poets. LGBTQ poets. Activist poets. 2017 will be a pivotal year for us all, so wield your love of poetry as a weapon against those who seek to divide us.

John Sibley Williams‘ most recent collection, Disinheritance (Apprentice House Press, 2016) is “A lyrical, philosophical, and tender exploration of the various voices of grief, including those of the broken, the healing, the son-become-father, and the dead. Disinheritance acknowledges loss while celebrating the uncertainty of a world in constant revision.” See John’s poem “It Was the Golden Age of Monsters” in Vallum 13:1.

 

A huge thanks and Happy New Year to all our readers and our contributors.

And be sure to check out Poem of the Week for 52 of our favourite poems this year.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE!

Download the FREE APP and FREE SAMPLE EDITION for your tablet, kindle or smartphone through PocketMags OR iTunes.

 

Vallum Newsletter November 2016

30 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by Vallum Staff in Newsworthy

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Vallum News! Find out about calls for submissions, contest winners, open contests, holiday promotions, and more!

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VALLUM CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS!

21 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by Vallum Staff in Newsworthy

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evolution

Image: Budi Satria Kwan

 

14:1 –  “EVOLUTION”

Evolution has been instrumental to developments in science, industry, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, posthuman and technological advances, spirituality, relationships, and even the historical progression of “mind.” How does the idea of evolving, in its many possible forms, translate into poetry?

Send us your best poems!
DEADLINE: November 20, 2016

 

http://www.vallummag.com/submission.html

 

Vallum Back-To-School & Fall Subscription 45% off

06 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by Vallum Staff in Newsworthy

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Get publishing!

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This sale is for ALL poetry lovers, avid readers, and writers alike! For new writers, we offer some friendly & writerly advice: As you launch your new writing career, it is important to publish your poems in excellent journals, but also to tailor your submissions to the aesthetic of each specific journal. To help you achieve your literary goals, Vallum: Contemporary Poetry magazine is running a back-to-school & fall subscription sale, offering two beautiful issues at a 45% discounted rate of only $17 CAD / $21 USD! This amazing deal includes both the print and digital versions of the magazine!

In every issue of Vallum: Contemporary Poetry magazine, you can expect groundbreaking new poems, essays on literary craft, interviews with established writers, reviews of exciting new books, and more. Forthcoming in issue 13:2 “The Wild” are feral poems by Jan Zwicky, Evelyn Lau, Peter Dale Scott, Cassidy McFadzean, Yusuf Saadi, Richard Sanger, among others.

Visit www.vallummag.com/backtoschool.html to subscribe now!

Offer expires October 15th, 2016

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